


Sherlock, where are you now?

by DrWholock_Holmes



Category: BBC Sherlock, Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, M/M, Post Reichenbach, Reichenbach Falls, Reichenbach Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-22
Updated: 2012-11-22
Packaged: 2017-11-19 05:33:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/569652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrWholock_Holmes/pseuds/DrWholock_Holmes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John goes to visit Sherlock's grave again and to tell him that he's never lost hope. Even in sorrow there is beauty and John's sorrow reminds him of a poem that he loves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sherlock, where are you now?

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fiction so I hope that you enjoy it and that it doesn't cause too many Feels!! Please feel free to leave me comments I'd love to know some feedback. :D :D
> 
> #IBelieveInSherlockHolmes

I thought I'd come and visit you again today Sherlock. I felt like I needed to. To just stand and think and see my reflection shine back at me. That's the one part I hate about being here, that SHINE. That streak of light against the black where your name is. Everything about it is wrong. To see MY reflection. Just mine. As though it's not a real image without you there. No head of black curls against pale skin. No dark blue scarf or upturned collar against the cold. 

I became so used to seeing my reflection as the both of us that sometimes I just have to stand there, looking in the mirror. Waiting for your face to appear. Always thinking you're only two steps away. That's the thing though. Denial. 

I've seen it myself written down in plain black and white. The rare note and faint scratch of pen against paper as the therapist sums me up and scrawls my feelings to be neatly tidied away in a cabinet full of tears and blank faces. Behind each alphabetised name there's a nervous twitch she's marked as worry or a silent but steady flow of tears perceived as betrayal.

I wonder what she'd do if she knew what I was doing now? Standing here talking to you as if it's the most natural thing in the world. I remember the first time. The pain is still as fresh and raw as if you were buried yesterday. Quietly telling you that you were the most human, human-being. Desperately asking you to give me that one last miracle. For you to not be dead. 

I saw Mrs Hudson again today. Just passing by. Like everyone else in this damn city that walks and laughs and rushes round and round with their everyday lives. Friends, people they know, people they like and don't like, girlfriends, boyfriends.  
Smiling about you hurts too much. Remembering when I told you all that the first time, you telling me you were married to your work. The first time of many I'd have to try and explain that we weren't a "thing." You saw me give up trying in the end but you didn't know why.

Not because it was too much trouble to explain that were didn't have something going on but because I couldn't. How do you say you're not in love with someone but you feel like you're only half a person without them? How could I laugh off the idea and say we were "just mates" after everything. I saved you from death when I'd only just met you. Seems I couldn't save you this time though. 

I'm getting distracted, missing out the important little details as you'd probably tell me, making it seem so obvious. Yes I saw her. She caught my eye and came over to hug me. She told me that's it's been too long since I'd been back. There. In the flat that's so empty now. There'd be your bullet holes in the wall but only the ghost of you, hands pressed together resting against your chin, telling me you were bored, that the wall deserved it. 

I'd walk around scared to touch anything, to move something out of place by accident, to ruin the memory. Everything just how it was before it happened. I'd feel like a stranger I think, in my own flat. OUR own flat. I didn't need to tell her any of that though. She only needed to look at me to see that her invitation to visit would be denied. 

She misses you of course, told me that she isn't going to tidy anything away. She's leaving everything to me. Until I can find a way to clear up what's left of your life. To yank the jack knife from your stack of letters, fill in the bullet holes or clean up the remnants of your experiments. A splash of formaldehyde here, a smell of coppery blood there. 

I'm not going to of course. I can't. Not while I still believe that I'm being an idiot and I'm standing here talking to an empty grave while somewhere out there, you're just waiting. Waiting to rush back into life with a brilliant explanation and another case. Bigger, better John, you'd say. You'd pull your scarf tighter around your neck and tell me a whole story from a few grains of sand or the scuff of a shoe on a floor. 

Sometimes I'm so sure of it Sherlock. Sometimes I'll see someone walk past. Tall, dark hair, slender or clad in a long navy coat. I'll be running to catch up to you, about to shout out "Sherlock!" Then I'll realise. My heart will slam inside my chest and everything will stop as my breath is knocked from my lungs.

Winded by the bike that knocked me over. My eyes will see the blurry outline of people and the pavement twisting underneath me and a body. Just a hollow shell, blood smeared on the face, seeping into dark hair and glistening in a puddle on the floor. Your blood. Your hair. Your body. 

No. Not yours. It can't be. The doctors have been wrong before. Look at Irene. Surely you could do the same. You always had a plan.  
The therapist's slight nod to tell me she's listening and the sympathetic look in her eyes. Everything's a lie. I have to believe in you, otherwise what's left for me? 

Standing here talking to you helps me in some way I think. Because I know that even if you're too far away to hear me, it's as if I can still tell you. I can go on about the little things that have been happening and I can be sure that somehow you know. Somehow you'd sense it; you'd know what was going on inside my brain. It makes me think of a poem that I used to love, all of this. 

Do not stand at my grave and weep  
I am not there I do not sleep  
Do not stand at my grave and cry  
I am not there I did not die. 

Sherlock. Where are you now?


End file.
